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Re: The Pacers have the 6th best FG% defense in NBA history

Kinda like the idiots that still whine over the pau gasol trde, while overlooking the fact Memphis got Marc gasol....

They were lopsided. Ex post, the trades you mentioned look better because the picks turned out to be Smith and Gasol. But the average value of mid first rounders and second rounders are much less than Smith and Gasol. If not, everyone would want a Laker second rounder.

Re: The Pacers have the 6th best FG% defense in NBA history

Well, they tried, but I'm sure the 2004 pistons are mortified that they weren't able to impress you with their half-dozen or so defensive NBA records that still stand.

Every team we played that year was a bad offensive team, dontcha know?

Ignoring the facts doesn't make your point more valid. Just between the Pacers games(6 in the playoffs 1 in the regular season) and the Nets in the playoffs, they played 14 games against teams in the bottom third of the league in offense.

If you play a larger percentage of games against bad offensive units, your defensive stats should be better.

Re: The Pacers have the 6th best FG% defense in NBA history

You mean a dysfunctional Lakers team, that nobody thought played like they had earlier in the year. Oh and 5 games against the offensively inclined bucks totally makes up for the 13 playoff games against Pacers and Bucks.

Are Pistons fans so disappointed by their current team that they have to go back and retroactively go back and add to their former glory.

Re: The Pacers have the 6th best FG% defense in NBA history

You mean a dysfunctional Lakers team, that nobody thought played like they had earlier in the year. Oh and 5 games against the offensively inclined bucks totally makes up for the 13 playoff games against Pacers and Bucks.

Are Pistons fans so disappointed by their current team that they have to go back and retroactively go back and add to their former glory.

Are some Pacer fans so unaccustomed to success that they have to pretend this year's squad is one of the best defensive teams of all time?

Re: The Pacers have the 6th best FG% defense in NBA history

That seems to make what Indy is doing in this season seem a little more impressive then I think.

The average team FG% for 03-04 was .439.
The average for this season? .447.

In 03-04, eight teams shot under .430, and only four teams shot over .450.
This season, four teams shoot under .430, and a whopping 11 teams shoot over .450.

In 03-04, only six teams shot a FG% higher than the current season's average, whereas, 20 of the league's 30 teams are shooting higher than 03-04's FG% average.

Those Pistons were a great defensive team, sure, but no rational person (that excludes a few of you, sadly...) can deny that their defensive numbers are clearly inflated by the fact that 03-04 was arguably the low-point of modern NBA offense. They were a slow-paced, plodding, ugly team, playing in the era of hideous offense.

My personal opinion is that those Pistons deserve about 80% of the credit for the defensive numbers they put up, while the other 20% is credited to terrible offense, league-wide. I'd put those numbers at about 90/10 for this current Pacers team.

One of the best testaments to the Pacers' defensive dominance is to compare their top-ranked oFG% (.413) to the second-ranked oFG% (Warriors; .429), and see how it stacks up to past margins.

Here are the top-ranked oFG%'s, and their margin over the second-ranked oFG's, since 1990:

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Re: The Pacers have the 6th best FG% defense in NBA history

I'd worked through the rankings of the Pistons playoff opponents and how they fared, but it seemed more like a pile on against KStat and I'm not really trying to tear that team down because once they added Sheed they were tough.

But with some of the other discussions let me bring up one of the main findings. They did hold their opponents to lower than their normal FG%, but the Nets and Pacers were below average FG% teams and fundamentally that post-season FG% number was built on 7 games - the first game vs the Nets (in the 25% range) and the 6 games vs the Pacers. The Nets actually went over 41% for 4 of the games (as I recall from looking last night) and the Bucks/Lakers both shot in the "decent" low 40% for their series.

But the Pacers...well they couldn't make a shot to save their life apart from one game and basically won at all on their own defense. This doesn't really dismiss the Pistons effort and has nothing to do with the sub-70 run (though league-wide the pace was much slower that year), but it does suggest factually that if you take out that Pacers series and only face teams with top 14 offenses DURING THE PLAYOFFS (where you'd expect to find quality teams) then the Pistons don't put up a number nearly as nasty as they did.

They were title caliber and one of the great defenses, but dwarfing what other great defenses did? No. Put them in the 2000 Finals and you don't see them keeping LA or Indy under 80 points. In my opinion obviously.

Remember that this is why the Pacers made the Al for Jackson trade. Detroit was able to use Sheed/Ben/Prince on the frontline as length against any interior offense, and the Pacers found out quickly they only had one outside threat - Reggie. So they swapped low post Al for outside shooting Jackson, and right before the brawl it appeared to have worked. Stupid brawl helped ruin what could have been a fantastic 3-4 year rivalry on par with 90's Pacers/Knicks.

Anyway to me it seems to be truth to say that the Pistons were an awesome defense and the currrent Pacers at full strength (but even without DG) are an elite defense. The days of a pace that supports regular sub-70 games is gone, but the Pacers are capable of knocking out several sub-80s games in a row in a season when that's abnormal.

Re: The Pacers have the 6th best FG% defense in NBA history

And yes, take out their best performances and the averages drop. That's stunning. I've never, ever heard that one before...

Yeah and if only we could add another 59 games we could actually have a decent comparison to other great defensive teams. They were simply a great defensive team over a 23 game stretch of a season (or however many games it was). Why so defensive?

Re: The Pacers have the 6th best FG% defense in NBA history

I'm not being defensive at all. I'm just pointing out they set more defensive records in 25 games than any other team did over 82.

But doing it over an 82 game season is what makes a defense truly great, fighting through fatigue and injury. As you said, Sheed got hurt and limited what they could do on defense. Do you think they put up the same insane numbers over 82 games?

Having said that, I think people here are underestimating that Pistons defense. If I needed to win a game, I'd take them over this year's Pacers defense.

Re: The Pacers have the 6th best FG% defense in NBA history

I've often said two things.

The Pistons after they acquired Sheed were the best defensive team I have ever seen. But the rules were changed after that season and the Pistons style they played in 2004 would cause them to foul way too much to be effective.

However if that Pistons team were playing right now, they would still be a great defensive team, just different because of the rules - but still great. The best I have ever seen? I don't know that - would have to see how they adjusted to the new rules.

Re: The Pacers have the 6th best FG% defense in NBA history

The Pistons after they acquired Sheed were the best defensive team I have ever seen. But the rules were changed after that season and the Pistons style they played in 2004 would cause them to foul way too much to be effective.

However if that Pistons team were playing right now, they would still be a great defensive team, just different because of the rules - but still great. The best I have ever seen? I don't know that

About as true as it gets. I still remember when the Pistons were gifted Rasheed. I loved our team and had faith in them but immediately stated that Rasheed was the x-factor and "there went our championship".

In our Pacers history, two of my biggest regrets are the day the Pistons acquired Rasheed and the Pacers trading Antonio a year too early.